Implementing SAP B1 for job costing: Everything you need to know

If your company is a small or medium-sized business that needs to integrate accounting, sales and purchasing data, SAP Business One is a highly competent solution. The system works extremely well for manufacturers, but also companies in the retail and wholesale distribution sectors. In our many years as a SAP Business One partner, we’ve implemented the system in a wide variety of businesses across the UK.

However, businesses involved in contract service management and project-based work often find that SAP B1, in its core 'off the shelf' form, lacks the specific functionality they need. SAP itself acknowledges that "every industry has its own unique business processes, requirements and challenges" - and this is why more than 500 industry-specific solutions are available to SAP Business One users.

The solution that many engineering services companies choose to extend the functionality of SAP B1 is Enprise Job, a job costing software add-on developed by one of SAP's most established partners.

What is job costing for SAP Business One?

The Enprise solution, which we've been implementing at APH for a number of years (we're the biggest Enprise partner in the northern hemisphere), allows SAP B1 to function as a centralised job management system. It enables companies that provide engineering services and other firms that do project or contract-based work, including professional services firms, to monitor performance in real time.

With job costing for SAP Business One, it's possible to accurately monitor labour, materials, purchases and resource usage against every job, project and contract in the business. It means you can track the true time and cost of delivering your services.

Why do you need job costing for SAP Business One?

We’re often asked why the standard version of SAP B1 does not perform this function.

Job costing implementation

Our implementation process for any SAP Business One project follows SAP's Accelerated Implementation Program (find out more here). This provides a clear framework, comprised of five phases, for delivering a timely and effective implementation that ensures swift return on investment.

To implement the job costing solution as part of a SAP B1 implementation, we simply require some additional data at the data import phase of the project. As well as the standard data such as stock quantities and financial balances, we add all existing data on your active jobs into the system - some indication of what costs you have incurred, the budget for those jobs, how much profit you expect to make, etc.